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Chapter 1: What is Lectio Divina and how is it practiced?
Welcome back.
Chapter 2: How do we prepare for meditation with intention?
In today's meditation, we're going to continue with the practice of guided Lectio Divina.
Chapter 3: What does it mean to breathe out tension during meditation?
This divine reading is an essential part of the Christian monastic meditative tradition.
Chapter 4: How do we receive and resonate with the phrase 'Be not afraid'?
Usually it would include taking a passage of scripture or some form of spiritual teaching and working with it.
Chapter 5: What does it mean to rest in the phrase during meditation?
But for the purpose of this meditation, which is aural in form, I will introduce a phrase from scripture that we can work with ourselves.
Chapter 6: How can we live without fear and embrace love?
However, the method remains the same and you can bring it to bear on scripture or spiritual reading or indeed any kind of text that you wish to draw meaning from.
Chapter 7: What is the significance of the closing bell in meditation?
So let's begin. Coming to stillness. coming to meditation, making the deliberate choice to be here, to be open, to be still. We make our ritual gesture. We sit with attention and open awareness. We feel our connection with the ground with the chair, with the cushion. We are ready and expectant. We are relaxed and open. Coming to the breath, we allow it to draw us into the fullness of stillness.
Breathing with attention, breathing in and breathing out. Breathing out all stress, breathing in only peace. Breathing out all anxiety, breathing in only calm. As we breathe, we breathe with every pore of our skin, feeling the body relax, feeling the body settle, feeling the mind come to rest. Gently, peacefully, without any agitation,
but knowing that if you need to move at any stage, you may feel free to do so. And resting with the breath, we introduce a phrase that is found often in scripture, a phrase that is at the very heart of our tradition. Be not afraid. Be not afraid.
These are words that are spoken often in Scripture, so often in fact that it is often said that there are enough of them to cover every day of the year. But for now, we are simply in this moment, hearing the comfort of this phrase, be not afraid be not afraid allowing the warmth of the phrase to be with us allowing its gentle support its encouragement to courage its invitation to trust
Be not afraid. Be not afraid. Be not afraid. And when we speak of the word afraid, we can almost immediately at times touch the experience of fear, touch the experience of anxiety or dread, And yet the meditator holds them lightly, knowing them as reactions. Sometimes truthful reactions. Sometimes reactions that come simply from anxiety or vigilance.
Sometimes there is a genuine need for fear in order to protect ourselves. And sometimes there isn't. But no matter what happens in our life, in our existence, we recognize within this tradition that the ground of everything is love, unconditional, eternal, and infinite. And so trusting in that love, we can hear it say to us, Be not afraid. Be not afraid. Be not afraid.
Be. Be. Be.
In the very essence of our being There is no fear. There is no anxiety. There is nothing to be afraid of. We simply are. And so we can say, be. Be. Be not afraid. Be not afraid. Be not afraid. Stabilizing ourselves in the constant ebb and flow of the breath, in the word as it resounds within us, in the surrendering of past experiences that caused fear or stress.
Learning from them, but letting the power of their fear dissolve in response to the phrase, be not afraid. Be not afraid. Be not afraid. Gently then allowing the word itself to settle into silence and stillness. Resting in the breath. Resting in the peace of the present moment.
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